The Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare

200 Schermerhorn St., Brooklyn (718-243-0050)

By day, on a deserted block in downtown Brooklyn, César Ramírez supervises the prepared foods for the gourmet grocery store Brooklyn Fare. By night, in a prep kitchen three doors down, the Mexican-born, Bouley-trained chef commands an audience of eighteen, seated around a brushed-stainless-steel bar, with an extravagant culinary spectacle. The experience, which was originally billed as a cooking class (and which was recently awarded two Michelin stars), is heavily theatrical: dishes are plated in canon using tweezers and chopsticks, and hushed reverence is all but requested.

The nine-course menu changes weekly, and starts with a flurry of unlisted canapés. Diners might pop fried hunks of blowfish tail, marvel at a sardine woven into a potato chip, and learn that kataifi is shredded phyllo dough, all before dinner even begins. As each dish is presented, Ramírez dispenses suggestions ranging from spoon selection (“Ma’am, your demitasse would be better”) to the ideal number of bites (one or two). The aluminum bar stools aren’t the only source of a slight chill; a stern note on the menu reads “We request no pictures or notes are taken and cell phones be used outside.” But then there’s the first official course—cod roe layered with baccalà mousse, crispy potato bits, and caramelized onions, topped with a heap of Burgundy truffle shavings—and it is wickedly good. The menu, with Japanese, Italian, and French influences, leans on fish and seafood. A Kumamoto oyster hovers between a Meyer-lemon gelée and a round film of oyster juice atop a dollop of crème fraîche, and fluke sashimi wears a disk of pickled daikon. For all his ingenuity, Ramírez can also make new sense of classic flavors: a raviolo of rich veal shank is balanced perfectly by salty Parmesan, sweet Vidalia onions, and delicately bitter spinach.

According to the hostess, the liquor license and mother-of-pearl caviar spoons are on the way. In the meantime, the lack of a corkage fee makes for high-end water-cooler chat by the D.I.Y. sommelier station. One evening, diners swapped splashes of Barolo and tales of Per Se while admiring the copper cookware and the Molteni, “The Ferrari of stoves!” And the hostess gave one customer’s Ribolla Gialla the ultimate praise: It’s going on the wine list. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays for dinner. Prix-fixe menu $135.) ♦